


New Flesh

by onlyheather



Category: Joker (2019)
Genre: Angst and Porn, Arthur being...well..arthur, Erectile Dysfunction, Eventual Smut, F/M, Masturbation, One-Sided Attraction, Pining, Sexual Frustration, he’s creepy, reader is a pharmacist, until it’s not..?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-12-24 21:49:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21106562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onlyheather/pseuds/onlyheather
Summary: He sees her like a doll in a dollhouse.Porcelain, beautiful. She exists only in that space- the dingy drugstore with its fluorescent lights and pills that are supposed to dull the pain but never really work.





	New Flesh

Your first day working in Helm's Pharmacy was drawing to a close. The sky outside has begun to dim, a darkening blue smog- toxic, dirty air. In your few spare moments, you've been winding down in the back with a shitty magazine, still not yet desensitised to the distinct doctors office-y smell of pills and medicines and ointments.

Just as you're poring over pictures of some wildly unattainable celeb, the bell on the door jingles, indicating a customer. Cold air pours in from outside, along with the faint smell of cigarette smoke. You look up from your magazine page to see a man entering.

He almost hobbles in, the ache in his legs and back evident even to you. Lanky, with greasy dark brown hair. His eyes are the saddest you've ever seen. Piercing green- but tragic. Dead inside, even. Like he's been beaten down by every day life and is now simply just existing, mechanically inclined to his everyday routine.

He seems to slow down when he looks at you, uncertainty in his eyes.  _ He probably doesn't recognise me _ , you think. Most people are used to Jimmy or Marie serving them at the counter.

"Hello, can I help you?" You try to sound as friendly as possible, and you see his eyes flicker from your face to the name tag pinned on your breast.

He ambles up to the counter, hands over his prescription to you. 

_ Mr Arthur Fleck _ , it reads. 

You do a double take. The array of meds and antidepressants he is prescribed takes you aback for a moment. A twinge of sorrow aches in your chest for this stranger.

"That'll take 15, 20ish minutes." You tell him. 

He nods tiredly, limps his way over to a seat by the window. It's obvious he already knows the whole song and dance- it's you that's learning. 

When you've put together his prescription, you return to the counter. He's still sitting in the seat, legs apart, arms resting between his knees. His head droops downcast, staring at the floor.

"Fleck? Arthur Fleck?" You call. His head jerks up to look at you. He stares at you so much that he toes the line of being creepy. You try to ignore it.

When you hand over his paper bag of pills, your fingers brush. He visibly starts, flinching.

He murmurs a thank you, so quiet you almost don't hear it.

It almost hurts to look at him, so raw and freakishly real. Thin, milky pale wrists flash themselves at you from beneath the sleeves of his baggy jacket. Tragically skinny frame, sleep deprived, aching eyes. He looks at you like you're some sort of holy object. You squirm with discomfort under his gaze.

"Have a good night, sir." You say curtly, quickly turning away from him to busy yourself in the back.

-

He makes the trek up those hellish stairs that night, legs burning with effort, lightheaded. Vertigo almost sends him spinning down the steps. Maybe he should let it. Maybe it would break his neck, put him out of his misery.

He stops halfway up to catch his breath. Considers sitting down and never getting back up.

Just laying on the stairs. Rotting into them, decomposing alive in front of everyone. Of course, they wouldn't really see him. They'd walk right over his corpse, pieces of him sticking to their shoes. Dirt. That's all he was to them- all he'd ever be.

_ No _ .

He didn't want to die like that- meaning nothing. Just another down and out destitute Gotham nobody, decaying on the streets. 

So up he went.

-

  
  
  


He thinks of her face. The new girl, working at the pharmacy. The brush of their fingers had sent a jolt through him. _Pathetic, how touch starved he was_. Her hand had been so warm. Solid. Not just a figment of his imagination.

He tries to touch himself in the dim light of his bedroom, the hand she'd touched stuffed into his briefs. He languidly strokes himself, trying to tease some life into his flaccid cock, taking a drag from a cigarette.

He soon gives up, watching as the wisps of smoke he breathes out curl into the air.  _ It's the meds _ , he thinks. 

Sometimes he sits and reads the little side effects leaflet over and over again, laughing, trying to think of a joke about his pathetic problem; that he just can't seem to  _ get it up. _

_ Loss of sexual desire and other sexual problems, such as erectile dysfunction and decreased orgasm. _

He rubs his face with a heavy sigh. For the fifth time this week, he toys with the idea of quitting them cold turkey.


End file.
